


monsters get

by eyemoji



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: ....but rewritten with some new information in mind, all deaths are the canonical ones, desperate measures but different, everyone's favorite scene..., hera don't do it, specifically:
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-26
Updated: 2017-07-26
Packaged: 2018-12-07 03:46:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11615220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eyemoji/pseuds/eyemoji
Summary: in 'Desperate Measures,' we never hear jacobi's side of things directly at one crucial juncture. maybe there's a reason why.





	monsters get

hera is not known for her compassion. 

 

not that she  _ can’t _ feel; no one would dare deny her that, not after seeing her threaten lovelace half to death when just a few hundred meters away, doug eiffel was choking himself to death on a last meal of unwanted coagulation and thinning hopes of defeat; not after hearing the relief in her voice that day so long ago when eiffel nearly died-- which, to be fair, isn’t very specific at all, but hera’s mind, so vast and powerful and all-encompassing, will always jump back to that day, the day that started it all, really, if she thinks about it too much, that day when eiffel got stuck outside the station and nearly drowned in one of the more obviously ironic moments aboard the uss fuck me up. and she’ll jump back to the overwhelming sensation that had swept over her when minkowski dragged his limp body back through the airlock, when his chest finally,  _ finally _ heaved and he’d sat up with a weary smile, 

 

“hey baby, did you miss me?” and if hera had lacrimal glands she just might have cried tears of relief.

 

more recently, doctor maxwell, lying stiff and motionless in a blocked off room, comes to mind, her suddenly fragile form looking all too breakable from everyone involved’s eyes; hera’s mind once again thrown into panic only this time it is an oxymoronic mix of calm and freak-out and she never thought she’d go to such extremes for anyone as she’s come to do for eiffel but there she is, calling colonel kepler and turning her back on both minkowski and eiffel, throwing them under the bus in order to save her,  _ alana _ . 

 

“you’ll thank me one day,” she’d said. “i promise.”

 

right now she’s not so sure.

  
  


jacobi is in the comms room, alone. he’s in the comms room, alone, and in eiffel’s spot. this is eiffel’s territory, it always has been; it was his sole refuge to times as far back and happy as the great toothpaste war, when minkowski’s morals weren’t as hewn away as much as hera’s always were, when the most dangerous thing about alexander hilbert was the chance that his lab would catch fire yet again, when eiffel was more a curse of an annoyance than a blessing of a friend. this is eiffel’s haven, his world,  _ his _ , and jacobi is in it, sitting as pretty as pie, not bothering to pretend he doesn’t have doctor hilbert positioned to be the star of his next fireworks show, not bothering to pretend he doesn’t hate this star more than he hates the good ol’ earth where his father and his dead squadron and his old life still reside. he’s fiddling with the comms panel, trying to make some sort of connection, to kepler, probably, to ask for his orders and to take them standing or lying down; it doesn’t matter which. they play their private games in public, dancing around each other and the words that would allow them to convey what they mean explicitly and maybe jacobi likes it this way, likes having that air of mystery, that lace curtain between them. this way, everything is a promise and nothing is at all; it’s a game of chance but the answer is always  _ no _ . until, one day, it becomes yes. he’s still waiting.

 

hera has always loved playing games. 

this is what she tells herself as she pretends to take pity on him and open up a comms line.  _ think of eiffel, think of the chess, think of eiffel, the solitaire, the connect four, the battleship, eiffel, the mind games and blame games and eiffel--  _ jacobi’s face clears as if the situation is coming together much more easily than he expected and he clears his throat ready to ask for directions,  _ tell me what to do, colonel _ . 

of course, there is no real comms line. just hera on the other end, ready to spit poison and fire right back at his face;  _ so you thought life was going to be easy? that monsters always get what they want?  _ or,

 

_ or, _

_she can make this much more painful than that._ one stone. three birds. if she can play this exactly right, do this without fucking everything over into the vast expanse that only she can really call ‘home.’ which she can. she _can;_ _thanks, doctor maxwell. thank you for the last gift you ever gave me. it really means a lot._

 

“Colonel?”

 

“standby for detonation, jacobi.” and it’s kepler’s voice and kepler’s inflection and kepler’s goddamn drawn-out speech patterns, but  _ it’s not kepler _ . 

jacobi, of course, doesn’t know that.

 

“Yessir.” and it’s as easy as that, to fool one of the top minds in the world; easy, maybe, because she’s one of the top minds in the  _ universe _ , but she doesn’t waste time dwelling on that. instead she shifts the majority of her focus to another part of the station, one where she’ll need a lot more tact if she’s to play this right. but hera is three. she doesn’t normally  _ do _ tact. 

 

“Hera, can you tell us anything about what’s happening inside the Urania?”

 

“no, sorry lieutenant,” and this at least is true; if hera concentrates hard enough it might make up for what she’s about to do.  _ this is my apology, lieutenant, _ and in some way, it is; it makes sense to hera somehow, in some deep reserve layer of the neural network that is her skeleton, even though she knows the others won’t see it that way, that  _ minkowski _ won’t see it that way, and what, really, is the point of an apology if you know in advance it won’t be accepted?  _ to assuage the guilt, _ she might have thought, if she had been the type to be more prone to guilt. or maybe she is. she doesn’t exactly know yet, although there goes the fishing rod again, casting her mind back to that day, another time before doctor maxwell and her si-5 showed up, to that day she’d had another  _ brilliant _ idea, and officer eiffel-- doug-- had almost paid the cost, and maybe that isn’t the best scene for her to think of right before she’s about to take on one of the biggest performances of her relatively short life, but in some ways hera is more human than most and this is one of them: she can’t control where her mind jumps. and once it’s latched on, it won’t let go, so that she can hear her frantic cries to minkowski as her very own software rebels against her:  _ you did this; this is your fault; fix it-- but i can’t do this; i can’t; i’m not good enough-- _

_ but you got it done, hera, you  _ did _ fix it, and he’s fine, but he’s not going to be for much longer if you don’t  _ do _ something-- pretend you’re doing this for him. it’s not true, but pretend.  _ maybe then the aftermath will be more bearable.

 

“Okay. What about Hilbert?”

 

frankly hera couldn’t give a damn, but that’s not what she can tell minkowski if she wants to remain suspicionless, something that, she suspects, will be very important if she wants to still be in her crew’s trust in the coming days.

 

“it looks like he’s made it to the engineering section.”

 

“And Jacobi?”

 

this is where it gets delicate. the comms crackle to life and,

 

“oh, he’s doing quite well, thank you for asking.” minkowski sucks in a breath only hera can hear. she wishes she could tell her, could whisper the truth into her ear  _ don’t worry, commander; that’s not jacobi; _ but that would ruin her entire plan and anyways, when was the last time she’d called her ‘commander?’

 

“Jacobi?! Where are--”

 

“relax. i’m not standing behind you with a bit of lead pipe,” and hera pauses, because is this snarky enough? is this something the real daniel jacobi would say? (assuming, of course, that the jacobi they have on board  _ is _ the real daniel jacobi, but that’s a whole ‘nother ballgame.) “ _ i wouldn’t do that to someone _ ,” and hera remembers maxwell and her wrench even as she says in jacobi’s voice, “no, i’m in your comms room.”  _ eiffel’s room, _ she thinks. she doesn’t know why that distinction is so important.

 

minkowski takes a moment before she replies.

 

“....Why?”

 

hera decides that if it’s sassy enough for her, it’s sassy enough for jacobi.

 

“oh, because it’s so much  _ fun! _ you know, eiffel doesn’t really appreciate the  _ finesse _ of all this equipment. for example, fun fact:”

 

hera takes a millisecond to consider. if she goes ahead with her plan, what she’s about to do is inhumanely cruel, and there’ll be no turning back.  _ but then again, so was he, _ and besides, she doesn’t really have an interest in being  _ human _ , anyways. there’s a not-so-fine distinction between being human and being a person, and only one of them matters to her.  _ maxwell understood that, _ she thinks, even as she opens up a comms line with its trademark buzz.  _ maxwell understood that, once.  _

 

“did you know, that from here i can arrange the comms so you can hear an incoming call--”

 

“Minkowski, are you there?” 

 

hilbert’s voice floods the line, cutting  him her off midsentence.

 

“Yes, Doctor.”

 

“Hello? Minkowski? Do you copy?”

 

“--but they can’t hear you?”

 

and so it begins.

 

“Oh, come on....”

 

“If you can hear me, I am two minutes away,” and the longer hera hears his voice, the less she feels torn up about where her plan is heading. because she knows that voice, knows it all too well, the way it condescends and tears at your soul, begging you to cut it off even as he cuts bits of you off and sends you spiralling into a madness you begin to think you can never escape; lost, floating in a void emptier than the space you’re supposed to be in, because here there’s no one and nothing, no minkowski, no eiffel, no reassuring beeps of the consoles you control, and it’s been so terribly long since the last time you lived alone. you don’t even know if you remember how.  _ he’s two minutes away, _ she thinks, with a vicious edge to her thoughts, _ two minutes away from a not-so-different kind of oblivion _ . 

 

and really, the more she thinks about it, the more she’s able to convince herself that whatever’s to follow isn’t her fault; after all, this whole  _ hostage _ thing was certainly kepler, if not jacobi’s idea, and though there was never any guarantee that jacobi would somehow find out about the  _ maxwell _ half of the hostage crisis, not without it coming over the station speakers (which hera so conveniently controls,) the  _ intention _ was always there, and, as eiffel so often says, it’s the thought that counts, right? she doesn’t know why she’s taking so much time to justify this to herself. it’s not like she’s  _ stopping _ to think about it. she is, after all, a great multitasker.

 

“Very funny, Jacobi. What’s your angle?”

 

_ oh, minkowski. if only you did. _

 

“angle? i don’t have an angle. don’t you know: i’m  _ craaazy _ jacobi, the loose cannon. i just think it’s funny to make your life that little bit more aggravating.”

 

_ well, all of that was true. don’t know if he’d have been quite so frank, but… _

 

it seems to go over well, though-- and by well, she means that they believe it.  _ all _ of them. she supposes it’s time for her to pipe up though; she’s always got something to say, and for her to remain silent now would be more than a little suspicious, no matter how much she purportedly hates doctor hilbert’s entire being. besides,  _ they _ don’t know this is about hilbert yet.

 

“why do i have trouble believing that?” and this is more than a little strange, talking to herself-- or at least talking to herself while she’s actively aware of it. talking to “herself” is maybe a little too common for her to admit to herself just yet.

 

_ does this need sound effects? i think this needs sound effects, _ and while she certainly could open up a second comms channel, silently, and use kepler’s voice to get jacobi to clap, all of that seems far too convoluted, no matter how impressive it’d be-- after all, in the end, none of them will know enough to be impressed. hera’s just the residential  friend helpful voice in the sky, after all. while she may not want to go through all the trouble of getting an authentic clap, she  _ does _ have a lovely collection of movies and tv references sitting in her databanks, and while she can’t use any of them to, say, play something that’s not home alone 2 for crew movie night, the information, combined with eiffel’s love of pop culture and knack for talking her metaphorical ear off about them--  _ don’t think about him, not now; you’re doing this for him, so focus!-- _ is more than sufficient for her to reconstruct her own little clap. and where some may call the involved effort “unnecessary and overdramatic,” some people, minkowski in particular, may remember hera’s tendency to be an absolute  _ diva _ when she wants. 

 

so “jacobi” claps. and “jacobi” says:

 

“now... let’s go over our current situation. colonel kepler has eiffel--” if she was human, she’d have tripped over the words, “--you have maxwell. very exciting.”

 

“Would you stop this stupid--” minkowski’s losing patience and hera needs to speed this up.

 

“and doctor hilbert is about… ninety seconds away from that hidden room in engineering where he and lovelace have been stockpiling napalm.”

 

_ bless minkowski for saying it in the vents. bless jacobi for setting up what’s to come. well, screw him, but… _

 

her thoughts are interrupted by maxwell’s laugh. two days ago, she would have killed to hear this sound again. now….well, she’s essentially doing the opposite,  _ aren’t you? _

it’s a good thing ais don’t have hearts to seize up in their ribcages as they feel slight twinges of nostalgic regret for the aftermath of what they’re about to do.

 

maxwell stops laughing and continues.

 

“Oh, your face is  _ priceless _ .” 

 

_ priceless. pryce-less. priceless. pryce-- _

 

“I’m so sorry. Did you  _ really _ think we didn’t know about that room? That we didn’t have it under surveillance?”

 

hera feels even more removed from her ‘body’ than usual when she responds.  _ you and me against the world; just like old times? _

 

“because that’s… well, actually, that’s  _ exactly the kind of idiotic mistake you  _ **_would_ ** _ make _ .”

 

_ this is for every single time you called me useless, incapable,  _ broken _.  _

who says ais can’t hold grudges?

 

if hera’s honest with herself, isn’t it grudges that are holding up this entire endeavor? hilbert and maxwell, both benedict arnolds of the top caliber, are the intended targets of this little assassination, and it’s true that hera has a personal vendetta against each of them. at the same time, that doesn’t make this necessarily  _ wrong _ , does it? maxwell is a threat, one that needs to be neutralized, and alexander hilbert is a necessary sacrifice hera’s willing to make, no matter how much minkowski isn’t. hera is at her ugliest when she thinks about the people who’ve wronged her; she doesn’t think as much or as deeply in all the right places-- for example, she’s got minkowski figured out to a T, more than she knows herself, she thinks-- but she doesn’t even hesitate to consider what will happen to eiffel, once hilbert is gone. no hilbert equates to no controlled treatment of his decima, and by getting rid of  _ both _ science officers? no chance for  _ any _ sort of treatment at all. 

 

hera is at her ugliest when she thinks about the people who’ve wronged her, and everyone, at one point or another, makes their way onto this list; it’s just that maxwell and hilbert outstrip everyone else for the top spot out of everyone on this damn station. the others aren’t guilt-free, and though hera knows, from the various bytes of information circulating through her system, that it’s not  _ right _ to speak ill of the dead, she also can’t suppress the memory of lovelace, eyes flashing, face jutted out in the direction of hera’s nearest camera, shivering in stark contrast to the fire in her demeanor, spitting,

 

“do something for me. just... count to ten. without glitching. prove to me that you can do something right, and i'll leave you alone.”

 

it’s one of hera’s most vicious memories, and also one of her most haunting ones. it plays now, looping over and over through her mind even as she talks her way through the tension down below.

 

_ “one,”  _ says the hera in the memory.

 

“fun fact number two,” says hera-as-jacobi.

 

_ “three.”  _

 

“you  _ think _ is secret…”

 

_ “four.” _

 

“...the  _ entire _ time…”

 

_ “six.” _

 

“...twenty pounds of C-4…”

 

_ “ei-eight.” _

half of hera holds her breath.

 

“...a hundred seconds,” says the other half, and it’s perfect, no stutter, no glitch. just daniel jacobi’s voice and an impassable threat.

 

the rest of the scene practically plays itself.

  
  


jacobi is in the comms room, alone. his fingers tap around the console, more out of restlessness than distress, hera thinks, although she can’t quite be sure. after all, she can only impersonate him, not read his mind. it doesn’t matter, though, because she lets the “comms” crackle to life yet again, and jacobi snaps to attention, his spine straightening so quickly hera thinks it’s a shame he doesn’t get whiplash. his eyes are automatically sharper; his fingers still. his leg continues to jiggle. hera doesn’t know why, but it’s not her job to question it. it is, however, her job to question  _ him _ .

 

“ _ jacobi _ ,” she says, and the vitriol with which his name is spat out alone might have been enough to convince jacobi that it’s colonel kepler on the other end. as it is, kepler is a welcome change from jacobi for hera to mimic; his regular speech patterns and impossibly so-dull-it’s-droll drawl, while impossibly  _ boring,  _ are easier to imitate.

 

“ _ where the hell are you? if i don’t get an answer in the next five--” _

 

“Colonel!”

 

jacobi’s face is ridden with tension, and hera suspects he hasn’t forgotten this morning’s promise of an abundance of steak knives if he doesn’t deliver.

 

“ _ where the hell have you been?” _

 

“Right here, Colonel. Ready to detonate on command.”

 

_ “i  _ gave _ the command, you--”  _ hera lets the comms system crackle over his “next words.” she’s not sure she has the exact type of intellectual prowess to come up with an insult that matches the exact combination of levelled anger and boiled disgust kepler seems to have a talent for coming up with. she wonders how much of his off-hours he spends thinking them up.  _ “do it.  _ **_now._ ** _ ” _

 

“Yessir. Do you want me to open up a comms line and let them know?” 

 

“ _ jacobi,”  _ comes kepler’s voice, infuriated, exasperated,  _ goddamnit jacobi, just get the job done, “blow him to hell.” _

and jacobi, ever the good boy, the good soldier, the weapon that slides snugly into the palm of kepler’s hand, obedient, well-oiled,  _ perfect _ , obeys.

 

in a perfect world, jacobi thinks later, in a  _ good _ world, in a universe with mercy, there would have been silence. shocked, stunned, outraged, betrayed,  _ lethal; _ he doesn’t care. just silence,  _ any _ silence. any silence would have been better. better than the immediate chaos that follows, the suddenly audible explosion that sends doctor hilbert on one final revolution around the star; better than the sudden crackle of the comms that tells jacobi he’s connected to somewhere, to someone, though he’s not sure who or why or how; better than the  _ bang! _ that goes off almost exactly in succession, the bang that is altogether all too familiar for jacobi’s liking and causes his heart to sink before he quite registers what’s going on. because daniel jacobi, for all his faults and fears and goddamn insecurities is  _ intelligent; _ MIT grad, direct recruit to goddard futuristics; these things don’t come along to just anyone. you have to be smart, to play this game. but she was  _ smarter.  _

 

the silence comes now, unforgivably late to the party and it lingers in the air like it can sense their turned heads, their shock, curls into their hair and around their ears as if it’s not quite sure whether to rejoice it the effect it’s brought or if it should grieve with them-- with  _ some _ of them, but if so, then who?

 

“lieu-- lieutenant… what did you do?” comes hera’s voice, startled and brimming with pain and threatening to break, threatening to break them all-- and no one but her knows that she is the least shocked out of all of the fools on this infernal station, this goddamned death trap disguised as a paradise, a second home light years away from home light years away from civilization and working hearts and kindness not seen as weakness. no one but her will ever know.

she will make sure of that.

 

_ so no one told you life was gonna be this way? _ monsters get what they deserve.

**Author's Note:**

> why the fuck did i reference friends.   
> \--  
> so many people have been trying to offer me evil!hera scenarios but i hold that hera on goddard's side goes against her entire being. you'd have to wipe away every single thing that makes her hera, down to her first attempted escape, for it to work, and at that point she wouldn't even be hera-- just another sensus unit by goddard futuristics.  
> so instead, i contend: rogue hera. a hera who would _never_ work for the si-5 or goddard, but who is fed up with the humans whose side she's "on." a hera who decides to take matters into her own hands; _what have they ever done for her?_
> 
> this isn't quite that, since she's still team hephaestus here, but... it's along that line of thinking.
> 
> catch me on tumblr @justasmalltownai. i freaked out mid-writing this that everyone would hate this and hate me bc hera does a Bad, and it spiraled into... a place, which is the reason for all this clarifying. i'll shut up now.


End file.
